Instile is owned by Mahesh Patel and Uday Patel, who became involved in the granite business back in the 1980s when they were working on their Master's Degrees at Wagner College in Staten Island, NY. “We knew a construction/real estate professional, and he told us about Indian black granite,†said Mahesh Patel. “We saw the value of Indian black granite, and had a backer in India who owned newspapers in South India. He advertised that we were looking for black granite. We went to India and purchased a container of tile at $7.50 per foot, and we had a buyer in the U.S. who was going to purchase it for $9 per foot. But the tile was out of square and the shading was off. So we took the tile around to various places, and eventually we were able to sell it.â€
Ultimately, they began an affiliation during the late 1980s with Grapco Granites of Calcutta, India, with an exclusive agreement for selling in the U.S. Known as Nika International, the company had stock in public warehouses in New Jersey, first in Newark and then in Middletown.